


Sour Milk

by Pomodoridori



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AU where riko escapes the master and Kevin does not forgive him, Child Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Past Child Abuse, and somewhat explicit beatings so be ready for that, may end up as fox!riko, theres lots of bruises, tho im not entirely sure yet lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 19:29:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12042687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pomodoridori/pseuds/Pomodoridori
Summary: This is the one where Riko escapes the master, and Kevin does not forgive him.





	Sour Milk

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, don't take this too seriously. I wrote it 'cause I wanted to explore Riko and Kevin's relationship-- it's not Kevriko, btw, thanks for asking-- and also the impact child abuse has on the psyche.

By the time the Master has finished with him, Riko can’t think. His brain is fuzzy and thick and pounding with pain. Vaguely, he registers that his throat is puffy and rough from the screaming. Moving is out of the question, and Riko flinches when ungentle hands hoist him up, so he’s leaning on someone’s side. Riko takes a breath, but it catches in his belly and he goes down, retching.

“Mon dieu,” he hears.

 _It’s Jean, then. Where’s Kevin?_ Riko frowns at the bile on the floor before he is being hoisted up and Riko is reeling, reeling, reeling. He sags against Jean. He’s probably getting blood everywhere, but it hurts too much for Riko to really feel it anymore. _I’m in shock,_ is his last thought before the rushing darkness claims him.

\---

Riko wakes in his bed, on his side. Jean is nowhere to be seen (not that Riko can see much, past the swelling around his eyes). It takes Riko a moment to remember why Kevin isn’t there, and then the bitterness swallows him up. He resists the urge to throw something. He fails, and the book on his bedside table thumps onto Kevin’s bed. It doesn’t help enough, and besides, the movement reawakes the agony that snakes across his body.

When Riko is done shuddering through the worst of it, he closes his eyes.

The image of his book on Kevin’s bed remains printed on the inside of his eyelids. He swallows, remembering how Kevin’d always leave his books piled everywhere. Riko rubs at his eyes to rid himself of the afterimage, and the pain distracts him from the memories.

_I can’t do this any more._

“Riko,” comes a voice, and Riko’d been hoping it was Kevin, but it was only Jean.

He opens his eyes to peer at Jean, who’s somehow standing over him. _I didn’t even hear the floorboards creak._

“You’re concussed,” Jean says, in the same monotone voice he always used when speaking to Riko.

Riko fails to see the significance. “Okay,” he replies, listlessly.

Jean gives him a weird look. “I’m gonna wake you up every two hours.”

Riko frowns. “I was asleep?”

Jean looks uncomfortable. _Good_ , whispers the vindictive bit of Riko’s brain. He doesn’t have any reason to think this, but it’s _Jean_ , so…

“Yes. I just woke you up.”

Riko blinks at him.

Jean scowls, then says, carefully, “You don’t remember?”

Riko snarls with sudden rage. “Fuck off, Moreau.”

Jean looks alarmed and retreats.

 _Finally,_ Riko thinks, dazed.

\---

The next time Riko wakes is because of the pain. It is so intense he cannot move.

“Kevin,” he moans to the empty room.

There is no reply.

\---

It takes an entire day for his fever to go down. Jean’s giving him pills, Riko isn’t sure what, but they dull the pain. It’s not gone, of course, and if he tries to move it still pins him to the mattress. But they take the edge off when he’s just lying there breathing.

He doesn’t remember what exactly the Master did to him. Riko isn’t completely sure he could if he tried.

\---

It takes another day for Riko’s head to clear. That’s when he decides he can’t do it anymore, not after Jean tells him, point-blank, that the Master expects him back on his feet in two days. Riko’s bruises are still fresh, still turning green and yellow around the edges. Jean’s face is cold, and Riko knows he doesn’t care that Riko won’t be back on feet in a week, much less two days.

He watches Jean leave with bitterness in the back of his throat.

Then, Riko closes his eyes and thinks, _hard_.

He realizes he has to get out, before Tetsuji manages to beat him to death.

So he picks up his phone and dials the number he’s had memorized since he was thirteen.

\---

Kevin picks up on the third ring. Riko can hear him breathing on the other end of the line.

“Please,” Riko says, desperate, “He’s going to kill me. I need--”

Kevin hangs up.

Riko stares at his cell phone in horrified angry shock. Then he dashes it against the wall in a fit of rage.

The phone lying shattered on the floor does not help. Riko glares at it before he succumbs to sleep.

\---

Tetsuji comes to his room the next day, and Riko wakes when Tetsuji prods him with his ivory cane. Riko hisses in a breath, and almost curses, until he sees Tetsuji’s face. Riko swallows and lets his eyes drift down to Tetsuji’s collar. “Master,” he says, voice rough.

Tetsuji’s answer is to slam his cane into Riko’s belly, and Riko curls in on himself in agony.

“Boy,” Tetsuji intones. Riko bites his lower lip, and then releases it, so he won’t accidentally bite it open. “Do you know what the ERC just told me?”

“No,” Riko gasps, trying to catch his breath, because he knows if he does not answer now he’ll hurt worse later.

“I should have known,” Tetsuji hisses, “he’s signed on with the Palmetto State Foxes.”

 _Kevin,_ Riko thinks, as he feels the blood draining from his face. He’s caught up in a mix of terror and rage, and the Master is saying something, but he can’t hear over the pounding in his ears.

 

\---

Riko was in the middle of a panic attack when he saw his chance of escape. His world had narrowed to forcing air into his lungs past the sobs, and his hands clutching at his hair, but he heard the Master turn away from him for a moment and Riko bolted. He shoved past the Master and down the hall, ignoring the screaming from his muscles. It was the first time Riko had ever run from the Master in his life, and he knew that if he was caught the Master would probably take more of his skin. So he ran. The Master was shouting, angrily, but all Riko could hear was the blood thumping through his veins. _I have to get out of here. I have to leave._

Jean’s room was empty, and Riko was choking on the air, but he rifled through Jean’s closet until he found one of Jean’s larger jackets. He zipped it up, and hoped it’d do a good job of covering the blood and bruises. He blinked down at his bruised legs, and took a pair of pants, too. He had to use Jean’s belt to cinch it tight enough, and slipped on Jean’s bright red flip-flops. Riko could hear Tetsuji coming down the hall, from the direction of his office. _He must have gone there first, to…?_ Riko shuddered and limped down the halls as fast as he could.

 _Kevin_ , he thought, feeling a little sick, _Kevin’s the only one who can help me._

_\---_

The bus ride was long, uncomfortable, _terrifying._

Any moment Riko thought the bus’d get pulled over, boarded, and he’d be dragged off. Then the Master would kill him. Slowly.

The further the bus trundled from Evermore, and the closer it got to (south Carolina), the more anxious Riko got. By the time the bus stopped in Columbia, he almost believed that the other passengers were hired to watch him.

There he got off, and got on a city bus. He rode it for fifteen minutes down the road, then walked back to the station on foot. Riko hoped that if anyone was tracking him they’d be thrown off. Buy him some time.

Riko was too wired to realize that the Moriyamas already knew there was only one place he would go.

\---

He arrived at Palmetto State in the very early morning, before the first light, exhausted and giddy with terror. Riko sagged against the door to the stadium, and waited for someone to arrive, anyone. His wounds were throbbing alongside the heavy pulse in his head. Riko groaned and slid down to sit against the wall.

            He closed his eyes and waited.

            When he woke there was a Palmetto State employee, probably one of the staff in charge of the stadium, jabbing him in the side with a broom handle. Riko tensed and swallowed down his instinctive rush of rage.

            “If you don’t leave,” the man was saying, “I’m gonna have to call the police.”

            Riko ground his teeth. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll go.” He stood, painstakingly, careful of his bad side.

            But then there was a screech of door hinges, and Riko watched a familiar figure walk outside of the stadium’s walls, on his far left. “Kevin,” he called, loudly.

            Kevin turned, and when he saw him, his jaw dropped in shock and he clutched his Exy gear to his chest. Riko limped towards Kevin.

            The groundskeeper hurried after him.

            “Kevin,” Riko repeated, and Kevin plastered himself against the wall.

            “Hey,” the groundskeeper said to Kevin, nodding to Riko, “you know this kid?”

            Kevin was pale, Riko noted. “Yeah,” Kevin replied. “I know him.” He didn’t look Riko in the eye. Riko swallowed down his sudden nerves and--

“Please,” he said, desperately. He knew he had no right to demand help from Kevin, not after what he did, but they were brothers, weren’t they? Kevin couldn’t deny him. Not when he knew what the Master had done.

Kevin’s face was pale and angry and tight, and he met Riko’s gaze. His eyes were cold. “No,” he said, and Riko choked.

“You can’t,” Riko gasped, “you can’t do that—you--” He started feeling dizzy, either from the blood loss or the anger.

Kevin looked away, unable to meet Riko’s gaze. He mumbled something unintelligible, and Riko was jumping, fast, to lunge and hit him in the jaw, because how _dare_ Kevin deny him, when he was Riko’s—

Everything was blurry, and Riko staggered, aware of the sudden numbing feeling of low blood pressure. Black spots danced in his vision and he sat down, hard on his ass, and when the pain spiked through his body he closed his eyes, breathing fast.

Riko didn’t remember slumping forward, but when he opened his eyes his nose was brushing the pavement and he was sprawled across his legs.

“Ungh,” he said, and glanced up, careful not to move too fast.

“Hey,” the groundskeeper said, sounding concerned, “are you okay?”

Riko narrowed his eyes, and ignored him. “Where’s Kevin?”

The groundskeeper’s lips thinned. “He left, after telling me not to call the police. I’ve half a mind to do it anyway.”

Riko growled.

The groundskeeper’s eyes looked him over, from his red flip-flops to his oversized sweater, and Riko can’t help but feel exposed, sitting there bruised on the concrete. “You’ve had a rough few days, haven’t you?”

Riko said nothing and stared over the man’s shoulder.

The man sighed and stood up with the slowness of one accustomed to bad joints.

\---

Coach David Wymack stares Riko down in his office with the cool gaze of one accustomed to defiance.

 _Well, he’d be used to it, working with the basket-cases on his so-called team._ Riko feels oddly detached, sitting there in that little office at six in the morning, until Wymack says, “Tetsuji called me last night.”

Riko swallows audibly, and tries to keep his face blank.

“He wanted you back,” Wymack adds, “I told him you hadn’t arrived.”

Riko flinches, and he makes some sort of noise low in his throat.

Wymack’s gaze narrows, and for a moment his expression looks so much like Tetsuji’s Riko feels sick.

“I’m somewhat conflicted about what to do with you,” he says.

Riko nods, understanding. _My family is powerful._

Wymack raises an eyebrow, and leans back in his chair with his arms crossed. “Say something, will you? I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall here.”

Riko looks down at the desk, where his hands are clasping each other so tight his knuckles are grey. “I’m not going back.”

Wymack grunts. “What made you run?”

“Mas—Tetsuji,”-- Riko hastily corrects-- “he was going to kill me.”

Wymack frowns. “He’s the one who gave you those bruises, then.”

“…Yes,” Riko says, after a lengthy pause. He can feel his heartbeat pulsing in the arteries in his throat. He doesn’t know why he feels so skittish—Wymack isn’t Tetsuji, for God’s sake, but—

“I’m going to have Abby take a look at your injuries.” The ghost of a smile pulls at Wymack’s lips, and Riko wonders who this _Abby_ is to him.

“Okay,” Riko replies.

David Wymack sighs, and leads Riko from his office.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing circa 2,000 words from Riko's POV was definitely challenging, mostly cause I couldn't decide how angry he should be, or when he should get angry, or what. And it was difficult to try to convey him as an utter asshole from his POV-- he reads fairly sympathetically in this. I did manage to work in some disturbing bits, though, specifically with how he views Jean and Kevin as, well, property.  
> :/ In any case, if this is continued, I'll expand more on his assholery.
> 
> I'd like to write another chapter for this fic, but who knows? I have other stuff that I should probably be working on...  
> Please let me know what you liked!


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